Where do I begin? I feel as if it’s been months, even years since I’ve posted here, but I’ll get back to it anyway. The past two weeks have been a sleepless haze for me. Ever since Mike went away for his trip to SD a few weeks ago, life has been full of illness and other unplanned events. Annie got sick again last weekend which ended up with her needing to go to the ER. Her asthma is usually the culprit which got so bad that none of her rescue treatments at home were doing the trick. We also discovered that she had pneumonia. Because of all this Annie had to miss most of last week of school. Annie was taking 4 different medicines at one point. Fortunately, two of the medications were only 5-day treatments and are now complete. However, Annie has now been prescribed a preventative inhaler which is to be taken twice a day for as long as her doctor feels she needs it. The good news about that though is that she should no longer require emergency asthma treatments. Hooray!

The drama didn’t stop there though. As soon as Annie was feeling back to normal and returning to school Violet decided it was her turn. She came down with a fever starting Thursday and continued on with it until Saturday afternoon. Thankfully, Tylenol did the trick with making her feel better and kept her from getting too fussy. Nonetheless, Vi did lose her appetite during those days and put us back to square one with her solid foods introduction and was waking up almost every hour at night. She still isn’t eating as heartily as she was before all this began, but I still sit patiently with her each meal trying to pry those little lips open. Vi is back to her normal sleeping schedule though.

Mike was in Utah for the bulk of all this, so it was a bit more difficult to deal with everyone being sick. He’s home now and shackled down. Life is finally getting back to normal. Thank goodness!

I’ll leave you with a couple of pictures of my dear children.

Violet in her pod.

Annie and Mimi hijacking my camera.

Ever since I’ve met Mike he’s raved about how great buffalo meat is and eats it any chance he can get his hands on it. Fortunately for him, many restaurants now offer buffalo burgers as an option. Mike’s passion for buffalo meat has even crossed over to obsession with talks of having his own buffalo herd one day. I just smile and nod but know that I’ll not let it happen. I’m not opposed to Mike getting ahold of some buffalo meat for us, but I just don’t want the live animals living within 50,000 yards of my front door.

So Mike got to fulfill part of his dream this past weekend. He and his friend, Chris, headed west to Buffalo, SD (how appropriate) to get themselves a buffalo to bring back. I won’t say how they obtained the animal, but I will say that they got what they wanted and by legal means. ‘Nuff said. I don’t have many details about the trip because Mike had very little cell phone access/signals, and he just returned from his trip late last night. However, Mike asked that I posted some pictures. Here you go.

This looks cold and reminds me of the last time we went to SD. Please tell me why Mike so is intent on living there?

Lucy got to go on the trip, too. She needed a break from us girls. Ha!

The author of a blog I keep up with from time-to-time recently found herself dreadfully plagued by head-to-toe hives. My heart reached out to this poor woman because I can somewhat relate to what she’s been going through, although not as nearly as awful as her. During my college and teaching days, a span of about 3-4 years, I was suddenly afflicted with a case of hives all over my body. After a few weeks of dealing with them and not seeing any signs of them going away I finally went to the doctor who promptly prescribed me Allegra, an anti-histamine, to take daily. It was a miracle because the hives disappeared within a couple of days. I had no idea what caused the hives, but the Allegra sure did the trick. One day I foolishly thought it’d be okay to stop my daily doses of anti-histamine medication and found myself with head-to-toes hives again. Back onto the medication I went. I took that stuff daily for about 3 to 4 years with periodic and unsuccessful cold turkey experiments, but I finally found I could stop taking the pills. I never really did find out for certain what caused the hives, but I’m pretty sure it was the laundry detergent I had been using. (Now I’m a Tide girl, through and through.) The reason I think this is because there have been a few instances where I did laundry at other people’s homes and used a non-Tide brand and later found myself itchy all over. This happened as recently as last April after visiting the Smiths (sorry for calling you out, Jenni) and was suffering itchy spells for a couple of days when I finally realized that I was wearing clothes that had been washed in Gain (I think) while at Jenni’s house. If I discover the mishap early enough and rewash those clothes, then I can usually avoid ever getting hives and cure the itchy spells.

Anyway, what is the point of this post, you ask? Evidently, I am being oppressed by hives. Again! After not having hives in over 8 years! I can’t help but wonder if these are sympathy hives for the unfortunate woman I mentioned earlier to remind me physically what she is going through. Why now? What did I eat, use, breathe in, absorb, or touch to cause these awful and itchy welts?!!!? After a few days they seem to only be getting worse. Ugh! Now what? I thought I’d snap a few pictures just to give you an idea of what I’m dealing with.

On my arms. Let me tell, it’s really quite difficult to snap close-ups of your own limbs.

On my stomach.

On my legs.

I have hives on my back, too, but tell me how in the world does someone takes a picture of their own back?

To brighten up this post, I’ll leave you with a recent pic of Mike with the girls.

I know I’ve been remiss in updating lately. This week has been frenzied with just about everyone sick all week. Mike and Annie both caught Mimi’s stomach bug. Mike didn’t actually get barfy, but he’s not been able to eat much all week since last Saturday. He’s still not feeling great after almost a whole week. Annie got sick Sunday night and provided me with lots more loads of laundry to do. Good times. Annie and Mike also got a bad cough. Annie even had a fever and was out of school pretty much all week. She went back to school yesterday, but then today the school was closed for the end of the quarter. So that means that she went to school one day this week.

On top of all that Mike finally had his surgery for making it so that we get no more Annies, Mimis, or Violets. It’s been a mixed bag of feelings for us, but we decided 3 kids is plenty for our family. Mike’s been having to stay in bed since the surgery, and it’s driving him nuts. But it caught up with him today (also because of his cold), so he’s back in bed taking a snooze right now. I’m sure he’ll be feeling better by the end of the weekend.

Violet is getting better about eating her vittles, but she still isn’t real thrilled about taking the cereal. She’s figured out how to spit it out which was cute at first, but not so cute after 2 days of it. Have a look for yourself and tell me that this is not cute in the least.

In other news, we apparently have a monkey living with us. Mimi has quite a fascination for grooming her little sister. The old-fashioned, monkey way. Mimi especially likes to pick out Violet’s “ewwies” from her toes while I nurse her. Weird kid.

It may seem like I’ve given up on blogging, and there were days when I thought the same thing. Life is finally feeling a little normal again, so I think it’s time to get back on the horse. To be honest, all my Christmas pics from our trip in NC were on my laptop, and I was too lazy to unpack the laptop to transfer the pictures to flickr. The deed is done now, and I now I can blog about Christmas.

Our time in NC was relaxing and fun. The weather cooperated all week with sunshine and warmth in the high 50’s most of the week. It was a nice break from the snow/wind/cold. My dad wanted me to search for retirement homes for him one day, so Mike decided that day would be a great opportunity to take the girls on the ferry over to Bald Head Island. They rented a golf cart and toured a couple of lighthouses. The girls had lots of stories to tell and shells to show.

On the ferry.

At the lighthouse.

Can you imagine the excitement these little girls had when they got to ride in the golf cart?

A chilly day on the beach.

The house my dad rented was right on the water. It was gorgeous.

The town was all along the water with a quaint downtown within walking distance of the house. We decided one morning to go for some hot cocoa and muffins down at the local coffee shop. Lucy accompanied us. She was made to wait outside, and looked so pathetic as she stood by.

Mimi and Lucy are great buddies.

My dream is to one day have wrap-around porches like this. I have always loved the southern style homes with their large porches.

My dad came well-equipped with Christmas gear including a tree/lights, decorations, stockings, hats, and other stuff. So we felt at home when it was time to open presents.

The girls awoke at about 4 am to open presents, but we made them wait until at least the sun had risen. Finally, at around 7:00 a.m. everyone was up and ready to open presents.

The girls were not thrilled to pose for this picture when all those gifts were just waiting to get torn open.

We had taken the girls a couple of days before Christmas to pick out presents for each other. Mimi gifted Annie with a jewelry box that has a dancing ballerina inside. And Mimi received a pug puppy in a cute purse. She named her Joey in honor of our friend, Matt’s, pet pug with the same name.

All other presents were overshadowed by long-awaited American Girl dolls, Kit Kittredge and Ruthie Smithens. The girls received a few other AG doll accessories like clothes, pet, vet set, etc. and the Kit Kittredge Movie, but the dolls were the big deal for this Christmas.

Of course, we couldn’t forget about Violet. She got some great clothes from Grandpa and lots of fun rattly toys from her stocking.

The adults got some fun gifts, too. Santa got Grandpa a Starbucks thermos and giftcard and a golf pullover from the local golf course. Mike received more hunting gear and new socks. I got a stick vac and a seasons flag pole. My dad wasn’t thrilled about getting me a vacuum cleaner for Christmas, but I told him that’s this is my life and vacuuming is what occupies my mind these days.

Mike and my dad spent a day golfing and another day fishing. Mike set it up to have a fishing guide take the guys out one day for in-shore fishing. It turned out to be a fairly windy/chilly day for it, but the boys survived and came home with lots o’ fish which now sit filleted in our freezer.

We had a really fun Christmas, and I’m glad we decided to make the trip down south. It actually reminded me a lot of my Christmas’ from my youth where we’d usually spend the holidays down in Florida.